Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Ice Cold in Alex Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 5, 2020

Note: This version of this film is available as part of Their Finest Hour: 5 British WWII Classics.

Their Finest Hour aggregates a quintet of really interesting British films about England’s experience in World War II, though kind of interestingly (and perhaps meaningfully), only one of the films in the set was actually produced during the war, with four others coming along from the mid- to the late fifties. Perhaps understandably, the film that came out in 1942, Went the Day Well?, is unabashedly fictional and perhaps tilted toward propaganda, while all four of the films that came out in the fifties ( The Colditz Story, The Dam Busters, Dunkirk and Ice Cold in Alex), offer stories ostensibly based at least part in fact. These are all fascinating films in their own ways, and several of them contain hugely enjoyable performances by a coterie of notables like John Mills, Michael Redgrave, and Richard Attenborough. At least a couple of them may well offer stories generally unknown "on this side of the pond", even to those who have a good general knowledge of the ins and outs of World War II.

Ice Cold in Alex makes for a kind of interesting companion piece to Dunkirk in that both films feature John Mills as a British officer trying desperately to get a ragtag group of people who have ostensibly been “left behind” to safety. In the case of Ice Cold in Alex, Mills portrays an ambulance driver captain named Anson, who finds himself stranded in the apparent fall of Tobruk (it’s perhaps notable that when Tobruk became a film in 1967, the Allies were depicted as being significantly more successful than they were in real life). What's compelling about Ice Cold in Alex, though, is kind of surprisingly not necessarily the "war element" (which is of course a subtext throughout the film), but the interpersonal relationships the film depicts.

Initially the other people holed up in the somewhat dilapidated ambulance nicknamed “Katy” that Anson drives include Sergeant Major Tom Pugh (Harry Andrews), and two nurses named Diana Murdoch (Sylvia Syms) and Denise Norton (Diane Claire), who join Anson in a perhaps mad trek across the North African desert in an attempt to get to Alexandria (the “Alex” of the film’s British title). They ultimately intersect with a South African officer named Captain Van der Poel (Anthony Quayle), whose stash of vodka immediately endears him to the hard drinking Anson.

While the actual World War II content putatively shows up a couple of times when Nazi scouts stumble across the group (scouts that Van der Poel seems to have a relatively easy time of dispatching, which unsurprisingly makes him a suspected spy), much of Ice Cold in Alex works best in some well written and performed interchanges between various groups of characters, all of whom are kind of stranded together in desperate circumstances in a hostile environment. In that way, especially in its really well done use of location work, the film almost becomes more of a survival tale, and the presumed threat from any Germans almost becomes secondary (with a couple of notable exceptions).

This is a film that hinges almost entirely on performances, as well as admittedly its use of its barren but evocative locations. Mills is really brilliant in the role of a kind of wasted warrior who still against all odds has the will to survive. There's kind of a curious lack of misdirection in terms of what's actually going on with regard to Van der Poel, and I'm not quite sure the overheated (and apparently controversial) love scenes between Syms and Mills always work, but the film offers an unusual setting with some exceptionally well drawn characters. American audiences long saw only a heavily edited version of the film that was put out under the name Desert Attack (which was probably deemed less confusing than the UK title), and in a way it's surprising that this film in any version isn't as generally well known as some other British war films.

Ice Cold in Alex Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: I'm beginning each of the individual reviews of the films in this set with some shared information to get some of the basics out of the way, and then I'll move on to comments about each individual film in the paragraph below. While Film Movement (on the back cover of this release) touts these as "newly restored" and "available on Blu-ray for the first time", I point interested readers to these reviews by my colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov of pre-existing releases of four of the films for the UK market: Went the Day Well? Blu-ray review, The Colditz Story Blu-ray review, The Dam Busters Blu-ray review and Ice Cold in Alex Blu-ray review. Svet's reviews are a good resource not just for Svet's thoughts on plots and technical presentations, but also to compare screenshots and supplemental features on each disc (which are sometimes but not always shared). I'll also mention that there is evidently a UK Blu-ray release of Dunkirk from Studio Canal that doesn't have an "official" review yet, but which does have a user review.

Ice Cold in Alex is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Film Movement Classics, an imprint of Film Movement, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.67:1. As with all of the films in this set, the insert booklet only offers a generic "new digital restoration" for this presentation, and I would normally say that this was probably based on the same master as the UK release that Svet reviewed, if it weren't for the slightly different aspect ratio. One way or the other, it does appear there are some differences here other than aspect ratio, based on a cursory comparison of screenshots. This release looks at least somewhat brighter overall than the UK release, but that said, nothing struck me as out of bounds here, and whites and other light tones (which are prevalent throughout this desert based film) never bloom. Detail levels are pleasing throughout this presentation, though fine detail can ebb slightly in some of the darkest scenes. Grain resolves naturally throughout the presentation. I'm once again giving this a slightly lesser score than Svet did, perhaps to at least slightly temper expectations since there are some uses of stock and/or archival photography (especially early in the film, but occasionally later as well) that can look pretty ragged. My score is 4.25.

Ice Cold in Alex Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ice Cold In Alex features an LPCM 2.0 mono track that is probably the best overall sounding track in this Their Finest Hour set. Dialogue (mostly in English, but with a few detours into German) is supported very well, and the score and effects also sound full bodied and problem free. Notably, there are some sequences here which are notably dialogue free, with only slight ambient environmental effects dotting the soundstage, and those are actually quite effective moments in the film.

Ice Cold in Alex Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Extended Clip from A Very British War Movie Documentary (480i; 12:59) includes some interesting interviews (including with noted producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, who did not produce this film) and background on the film.


• John Mills Home Movie Footage (480i; 15:02) is culled from the National Film and Television Archives in England, and comes with some introductory text cards explaining how Mills like to take his home movie camera and shoot candid footage while he was filming. This is silent, but is in color. The source element is somewhat damaged at times.


• Interview with Melanie Williams (480i; 15:39) features Williams, who is Reader in Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia, discussing the film.


• Steve Chibnall on J. Lee Thompson (1080p; 12:37)


• Interview with Sylvia Syms (480i; 21:51) features some interesting anecdotes about the shoot as well as more biographical information about Syms.

Additionally, the insert booklet that comes with Their Finest Hour: 5 British WWII Classics includes an essay about all five films in the set. As with many Film Movement releases, there's the About Film Movement option on the Main Menu which provides some text and a trailer.

Ice Cold in Alex Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Ice Cold in Alex is a really fascinating film on a number of levels, and in some ways its connection to World War II, while obvious, isn't really all that germane to the underlying tale of people stuck in a remote location under desperate circumstances. This offers an especially fine performance by Mills, and the supporting cast is similarly impressive. Technical merits are solid, the supplementary package very enjoyable, and Ice Cold in Alex comes Recommended.